By Jessie Duncan, 

Assistant researcher at Federation University Wimmera-based organisations recently celebrated 10 years of Communities of Respect and Equality, CoRE, membership with Women’s Health Grampians. 

CoRE commits members to addressing gender-based violence in their communities, and I congratulate those involved in this essential work.

But there is more to do. This issue impacts people at every level of our community. 

Gendered and family violence does not discriminate between socioeconomic class, race or culture. 

It is impacting women, children and families every day in the Wimmera and Grampians.

Horsham has the fourth highest recorded rate of family violence incidences in the state per 100,000 in Victoria in the year ending June 30, 2025, as sourced from the Crime Statistics Agency.

Northern Grampians, Ararat and Yarriambiack municipalities occupy places in the top 13 council areas for police recorded family violence incidents per 100,000 for the same period. 

To put it another way, we have more family violence in our communities than Ballarat. 

Despite the data, my PhD research into gendered and family violence in the Wimmera through Federation University found that as a community, we do not realise how big the issue is, and we do not easily recognise non-physical forms of gendered and family violence. 

The most often recorded types of abuse for Horsham in the year ending June 30, 2025 were verbal abuse and emotional abuse, making up over two thirds of family violence incidences. They are both types of coercive control.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare states that coercive control is ‘often defined as a pattern of controlling behaviour, used by a perpetrator to establish and maintain control over another person’.

Someone using coercive control may or may not use physical violence. 

Notably, research has shown that coercive control without physical violence can be just as harmful to people as coercive control with physical violence. 

Coercive control can include controlling the finances, refusing to let a partner get a job or spend time with friends and family, or repeatedly putting them down. 

Other forms include monitoring a partner’s social media or phone, their physical location, or who they spend time with. 

It can be behaviours like blaming a partner for their own emotions and reactions, creating a dynamic where the partner must walk on eggshells to avoid further blame. 

These behaviours form a pattern that is difficult to name, especially because they erode the victim-survivor’s confidence in their own feelings. 

A victim-survivor may also find themselves isolated from friends and family, financially dependent on the person causing harm, and unable to leave safely.

Yet too often during my research I heard the question ‘why doesn’t she just leave?’. 

But we need to be asking a different question: ‘Why is there so much gendered and family violence in the Wimmera?’ 

It is a hard question, one that I hope we continue to reflect on as a community.

Disclosure: Ms Duncan’s PhD research is co-funded by Federation University and Women’s Health Grampians.

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